Cancer kills almost a third of us, and yet we spend just £10 per person per year looking for a cure—and it's by far the best-funded medical condition. Our investment in science is woefully small compared to the scale of the problems it’s trying to solve. Dr Andrew Steele (physicist, optimist and FameLab UK winner) explains why our miniscule spending on science doesn’t make sense, and why it’s vital that we make science funding a political issue.